


it's been a long, long day

by idlesong



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Blow Jobs, Crushes, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, references to other nct members, yuta (and johnny) have helpless crushes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 08:13:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14052714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idlesong/pseuds/idlesong
Summary: Yuta thinks Sicheng is an enigma. Sicheng just calls it being himself.





	it's been a long, long day

**Author's Note:**

> • i've been out of the fic writing game for a few years, but my exponentially growing interest in nct culminated into me suddenly having a lot inspiration and 13 wips u__u this is the first that i got done
> 
> • sorry for any mistakes, i tried to edit best i could but i've also been so sleep deprived lately due to finals creeping up on me
> 
> • i'll have something else up soon ♡ very excited to see where my exploration of nct's dynamics goooo

It’s been some time since Yuta’s been to a party. It wasn’t that he disliked going to them, but he was making an effort to make sure he did as well as he could in his classes this year. (So far he was doing a pretty good job, save for that one 8 a.m he could never make if he tried.) He guesses that the last time he had gone to a party was the one early in first semester, after the harrowing duties of being an orientation leader had wound down.

He remembers, that was the night Johnny dared anyone to match his shots, and Jaehyun’s new housemate had taken on the challenge in exchange for something. Yuta didn’t see Johnny or Ten for the rest of the night, but that incident could be traced to why he was here now. (In the following months, despite being a member himself, Johnny didn’t give a fuck about attending International Student Association events unless he knew Ten would be there.)

About an hour ago Yuta had been hauled from the comfort of his single bed and dragged to the old brick house their friends shared. Where Johnny was now Yuta wasn’t sure, but he supposed he was on the hunt for Ten again to get in his pants instead of being honest about he felt. It had a lot more to do with his heart than his dick.

Yuta was drunk himself, more so than he expected to get, but he had stopped counting beers after he figured it wouldn’t matter if he sobered up enough before leaving. Johnny would help get them home. He never slept over at Ten’s anyway, and vice versa. Something about the morning after being too emotionally intimate. Those idiots.

In the meantime Yuta’s been stranded on this couch, a dark glass bottle held in one hand and the phone with which he’s clumsily texting Taeyong in the other. If Taeyong had come like Yuta begged him to, then maybe they could be bored together and shoot the breeze for hours like they always could. But no, Taeyong had been practically glued to his books since the year started, determined to get a competitive enough GPA for his master’s program. Yuta can empathize—he’s trying to get into law school of all places—and often, he’ll beam with pride at his friend’s ambition. But right now, he wants to give that nerd a wedgie.

“Hey.”

Yuta hears the word immediately following a weight that falls into his lap. It’s a person—someone with a mop of blond hair and eyes whose expression is hard to read. Yuta doesn’t say anything, just blinks back, can’t muster up a reaction. What was the socially correct thing to do when a stranger sat in your lap?

“Is this okay?” the stranger asks, blinking his eyes back at him. His long eyelashes are the first thing Yuta notices, as well as the soft flush in his cheeks, like he’s warmer than he would usually be.

“Are you drunk?” Yuta asks back, getting his answer when the other man’s laugh (more like a giggle, really) betrays the faint scent of alcohol on his breath.

“A little,” he says, then he leans in and fucking _taps_ Yuta’s nose with the tip of his index finger. It’s not really flirtatious more than it’s just…weird, but it’s not so weird that Yuta’s compelled to push this stranger out of his lap. He has some reticent air about him, like he knows something that Yuta doesn’t, but Yuta’s not too morbidly curious about that. He’d rather know something simple, like his name.

So he asks for it, and the stranger looks surprised, as though Yuta’s done something unexpected. “You first,” he says quietly, his large eyes boring into Yuta’s. It’s making the latter feel uneasy. Or turned on. He can’t tell right now.

“Yuta,” he replies, holding his hand out at a very short distance that the other takes tentatively to shake. This is still weird, but at least the touch reassures Yuta that this guy is a real person and not some figment of his imagination.

“Yuta,” the stranger repeats, the syllables rolling out slowly from his barely moving lips. Yuta doesn’t realize he’s staring at them until he sees them curve, amusement sliding across them as he catches Yuta’s line of vision. His fingers press softly into Yuta’s jaw. They’re coaxing.

“Yours?” Yuta mumbles, their noses gently bumping as he leans into his touch. As he moves to close the distance between them, Yuta hears the quietest whisper of “Sicheng”. No longer a stranger by Yuta’s standards, he curls an arm around Sicheng’s waist and pulls him closer.

 

They find some poor sap’s empty bedroom after some searching (and very purposeful avoidance of the room Yuta knew to be Ten’s). Sicheng’s hands are firm on the sides of Yuta’s neck as they fumble onto the bed clumsily. The older’s knees fall on either side of Sicheng’s waist as he trails kisses along his clavicle. A little whimper leaves Sicheng’s lips, and it makes Yuta’s mind flare up with possibilities.

“How…How far do you want to go?” Yuta asks him, pulling away for a moment to stare at Sicheng’s unreadable expression. Well, he’s smiling, but it’s the faint smile that’s been on his lips since he first got into Yuta’s lap.

“Not all the way,” Sicheng says in return, and something about the turn of phrase makes Yuta feel compelled to coo, but then Sicheng is lifting his upper body and pulling Yuta in by the collar. “But I’d like to blow you, if that’s okay with you.”

It is most definitely okay with Yuta.

Their positions switch, with Yuta on his back as Sicheng bends between his legs and _holy fuck_ if this isn’t the furthest from where Yuta expected his night to go. He doesn’t have much time to dwell on it though because Sicheng’s undoing the button of his jeans and needs him to lift his hips up so they can be tugged down to his thighs. If this is as undressed as they’re going to get, Yuta’s disappointed that he didn’t revel in it more when his hands were around Sicheng’s tapered waist.

Sicheng’s face is hovering over Yuta’s again, a reminder to the latter that he shouldn’t be so occupied with the thought of touching Sicheng when Sicheng was touching him. Their mouths meet messily, Sicheng’s lips warm and slick against his. Yuta’s trying not to fantasize _about_ him while _with_ him, but his mind can’t help but move faster than his reality right now.

Reality catches up for good when Sicheng’s fingers are dipping below the waistband of Yuta’s boxers, fingers wrapping around his semi-hard cock. A moan rumbles through Yuta’s throat at the warmth of Sicheng’s hand as he jerks his wrist roughly, the gruff sound caught in their kiss.

Soon Yuta’s eyes are blinking open to see Sicheng pull away, vision growing less hazy in time to witness Sicheng’s lips quirked higher at their corners as he folds himself down to Yuta’s crotch. Sicheng doesn’t hesitate, or tease, he takes as much of Yuta he can at once, his hand fisted around what his mouth can’t reach.

Yuta doesn’t move if he can help it, doesn’t want to startle Sicheng with any sudden actions, even if he’s close to squirming because of how he can feel Sicheng’s tongue drag along the underside of his dick. A groan escapes his lips, partially obstructed by how he’s biting down on his closed fist.

Sicheng pulls away for a second, reaches for the hand of Yuta’s that lays pliant at his side and guides it to his own head. Yuta’s not sure what that means, but Sicheng’s looking up at him expectantly. When Yuta still hesitates Sicheng sighs and slides his mouth down on Yuta’s length, and Yuta’s fingers instinctively curl into Sicheng’s hair.

The harsh tug earns Yuta a noise of approval that makes his size twitch in Sicheng’s mouth, and from then on he’s only encouraged to continue doing so, to have his hips buck up like he’s been tempted to do all along. He opens his eyes for a moment to get a glance down at the sight below him and he finds Sicheng staring right back at him with those wide eyes, somehow conveying more expression than Yuta’s been able to pick up from him all night.

Yuta’s body feels like it’s on fire right now, lit up by whatever desire had laid latent that he thought had faded out completely after what he assumed was a fair amount of casual sex he had had throughout college. Usually he’s not one to be so rough, but Sicheng seems to be enjoying it too, if the little sounds that Yuta could feel more than he could hear were any indication.

So Yuta hesitates less, thrusts upward until Sicheng’s blurry-eyed and groaning around his cock. He wishes he could hear more of it, moans that weren’t as muffled. A strange occasion to be thinking ahead once more, but Yuta wonders if Sicheng would see him again. Sicheng hums, almost as though he could read Yuta’s mind, or was at least able to tell that his attention was wandering, and Yuta bucks up again, fingers roughly fisted around Sicheng’s hair.

Sicheng takes it, takes it because it’s what he demanded, and Yuta grows suddenly aware of the fact that he’s never had power in this situation. That pushes him over the edge—Yuta doesn’t have time to process the implications of that fact because he’s making sure to release Sicheng’s hair, the only warning he can manage to pull off if he wanted, but Sicheng doesn’t. He keeps his mouth on him, strokes him through his orgasm until Yuta’s hips are stuttering to a gradual halt.

“Holy shit.” The words drop from Yuta’s mouth quietly, barely above an exhale, and he manages to catch Sicheng sitting on his knees and ankles, observing Yuta with some curiosity as though he wasn’t the one who caused him to get to this state.

They’re quiet for a little longer, Yuta’s chest heaving with breaths when a repetitive chime interrupts the moment. He raises his head with some confusion, but Sicheng silences it when he answers his phone, speaking curt sentences in Mandarin before nodding his head alongside a tone of confirmation.

“My friend’s looking for me,” Sicheng says, swinging his legs off the bed and getting to his feet. “See ya.”

Yuta blinks at him, bewildered at this sudden exit, but he’s too spent to run after Sicheng right now. Sicheng throws a glance back at him and waves before opening the door. Light streams into the bedroom briefly, and when the darkness returns entirely, Yuta turns his head to directly face the ceiling as he tucked himself back into his pants.

He didn’t have the energy for this right now. He’ll find Sicheng later.

 

But he doesn’t. By the time Yuta had returned to the party, Sicheng was nowhere to be found and Johnny was itching to go home. It takes Johnny about fifteen minutes to say goodbye to Ten—during which Yuta’s eyes scan all of the occupants to see if there was a man with blonde hair and wide eyes amongst them, but no cigar.

“Did you hook up with someone?” Johnny asks as he punches in the code for their front door. “Jaehyun saw you coming out of his room.”

“Sort of. Some unfinished business there,” Yuta says sleepily, wanting nothing more than to brush his teeth and get into his small ass bed. Tomorrow he’d text Ten and ask about— “Sicheng. Do you know a Sicheng?”

“No?” Johnny says in a questioning tone as he toes off his sneakers, his volume dropping in case Taeyong was already asleep. “Was that the guy you hooked up with?”

“Yeah,” Yuta whispers back, taking soft steps across their foyer as he tried to avoid the little creaks in the floor, the locations of which he had come to memorize since moving in. “God, it’s like he sucked the soul out of my dick.”

“That’s special. You should ask around about him,” Johnny says, peeking around the corner into the living room to check if anyone’s around before turning the lights off. “Taeyong’s running up our electricity bill.”

“It’s for his own sake,” Yuta says with a yawn, heading in the direction of the bathroom. “He can’t sleep if he feels like he’s home alone.”

 

“I’m telling you, he was real.” Yuta has been rebuffing Johnny and Taeyong’s statements of disbelief for the past two weeks, ever since Yuta asked Ten about Sicheng and Ten responded with “who?”

So maybe he wasn’t a friend of Ten’s, but between himself and his roommates Yuta knew almost everyone who had been in attendance, and none of them had brought a +1 who was as charming as he was enigmatic.

“It’s not that we don’t want to believe you, it’s just that it seems unbelievable,” Johnny says, his chopsticks falling onto the tabletop with a clatter, to which Taeyong winces. He had a rule about just balancing cutlery over their rice bowls, so as to not litter the table with pepper flakes or broth stains.

“Maybe you got sleepy and had a really vivid dream,” Taeyong reasons, his hand automatically reaching out to catch a drop of soup that had just fallen out of Johnny’s spoon. “It’s been what—three weeks? And no one we knew at that party knew him.”

“First of all, it’s been two weeks,” Yuta states first, earning a shrug from Taeyong. “And second of all, I know it wasn’t a dream. I remembering getting up to the bedroom with him and him leaving and me leaving like fifteen minutes later. I would’ve remembered falling asleep.”

“You were still kinda drunk when we left. You’ve blacked out before,” Johnny points out.

“I didn’t black out, asshole. Blacking out would have meant I didn’t remember anything. But I remember it all,” Yuta insists, tightening the grip around his spoon.

“Well, go on and find him then, if you’re so sure. But finish your food first,” Taeyong says, shooting him a pointed look. “I didn’t slave over the stove for nothing.”

Johnny begins drinking his broth very loudly straight from the bowl. Yuta rolls his eyes.

 

“Dude, I told you, I don’t know a Sicheng,” Ten says with a huff when Yuta asks him about it for the nth time. He’s sprawled out on Johnny’s bed, his head hanging upside down off the edge. During the time between the party and now, between the beginning and continuation of Yuta’s suffering, Ten has been spending an awful amount of time at their apartment. Yuta and Taeyong don’t say anything about it to Johnny, because they’re over trying to get those him to confess when Johnny was too stubborn to admit it.

“Well—Do you have any Chinese friends who were there? He answered a phone call in Mandarin and said his friend was looking for him before he left,” Yuta asks, sitting crosslegged on the floor.

“Yukhei was there,” Johnny says nonchalantly, his eyes trained on his laptop screen.

“Who?” Ten questions, his eyebrow raised at the name.

“He’s a first year. I only know him because I was his frosh group leader,” Johnny recalls. Yuta briefly wonders whether this Yukhei was the same frosh who had started a water balloon fight on game day. Johnny had come home soaked to the bone. “He’s from Hong Kong though, so he might speak Canto?”

“I don’t care, it’s still closer than I’ve gotten in weeks,” Yuta says, attention piqued. “Is there any way I could find him?”

Johnny lifts his head to look at Yuta, his lips pressed into a thin line that’s telling Yuta he won’t be happy with the answer. Yuta falls onto his back with a groan. Ten turns his head slightly to press a kiss on Yuta’s forehead. Johnny scowls.

 

Yuta’s only ever directly contributed to the Japanese Student Association, a subsidiary of the ISA that rarely interacted with them. That didn’t exempt any of the subsidiary members from the annual showcase though, and between his never-ending assignments, the preparations for the event, and having to help choreograph a performance, Yuta’s prospects of finding Sicheng seemed to getting slimmer and slimmer.

The only glimmer of hope was the fact that someone who might know Sicheng, whoever brought him to Ten’s party, _might_ be floating around the bustling campus. Yuta didn’t even feel hope to see Sicheng himself. He had become a conundrum in Yuta’s mind, a figure straight out of the Twilight Zone. The farther he got from that night, the more he was inclined to believe Taeyong’s theory. A drunken fever dream, it must have been. Maybe that was the best thing for Yuta to believe, in order for his poor sanity.

Because Yuta isn’t too much of an over-thinker. He likes to conceptualize to the simplest ideas, and ideas that were irrelevant to him need not apply. (Was water wet? He didn’t care, because water gets other things wet, and that’s all that mattered. Did straws have one hole or two? He didn’t care, because the straw would allow liquid to pass through anyway. He was definitely the biggest asshole in his first year philosophy class.)

Sicheng though, he couldn’t figure out. How could someone so easily slip by in that kind of encounter? Yuta wasn’t used to things he couldn’t think his way out of. As much as it didn’t matter—it was a drunken hook-up, Yuta had his fair share of those before without seeing the person again—usually he had the choice of whether he saw those people again. Maybe this whole incident would be a reminder that the universe was arbitrary, that he couldn’t have control over every aspect of his life, but then Yuta realized he was spiralling into overestimation.

He hated that.

Then suddenly, Yuta could hear the universe laughing when he quite literally runs into him. They bump shoulders as they hurry past each other backstage, the both of them in costumes for their respective performances. Yuta curses lowly, quickly checking where his clothes had been rustled to check for any damage. The fabric was rigid, but so was the upperclassman who had helped rent their costumes: she had been adamant that they be returned in pristine condition.

In front of him a mop of blond hair is bowing, apologizing for the trouble. Yuta freezes, looks to the person in front of him. A guttural sound escapes his throat, but it doesn’t seem to faze Sicheng. He stares at Yuta for another second, but doesn’t seem to have much of a reaction otherwise, and moves to turn around.

“I found you,” Yuta says, quickly, because he doesn’t want to get left again.

“So…you have,” Sicheng says back with uncertainty, as though he hasn’t been as elusive as he has for the past month or so.

“You—You sat in my lap at a party,” Yuta tries instead, to remind him just in case.

A flash of recognition crosses Sicheng’s face, but he still seems in the dark. “More details please,” he says curtly.

“We made out,” Yuta mumbles, the people running about around them, doing soundchecks and delivering props and fixing set pieces, still left him worried about getting overheard. “Then you-you blew me.”

“Oh. Yuta,” Sicheng says, his expression unreadable as ever. But hearing his name at least makes Yuta breathe a sigh of relief. At least he wasn’t entirely forgotten. “Was it good?” Sicheng asks, crossing his arms. He sounds like he’s genuinely curious, but there’s also a shadow of a smirk on his lips.

“Yeah?” Yuta responds, confused at this situation, the curtness of it, the bizarre feeling of seeing Sicheng in front of him again.

“Cool,” Sicheng says coolly. “I gotta go to soundcheck.”

Then he begins to walk off, and Yuta wants to tell him to wait, but what more did he really have to say? Stay behind and explain why you are the way you are? Why were you at Ten’s party in the first place? Who brought you there? What was it about you that made me obsessed with seeing you again?

In the midst of all this thinking he never really thought of what he’d say if he got a chance. So Yuta stares dumbly, although he doesn’t miss the opportunity to have his gaze pointed towards Sicheng’s ass as he walks away.

 

Yuta hurries into the audience after his own performance, a seat saved for him by Johnny and Ten. He was still sweaty from being under the hot stage lights and in those stuffy clothes for so long but he was too curious to see what Sicheng had in store. The lights dimmed once more, before the red lights at the back of the stage flash, and two lines of students file from opposite wings to meet in the middle.

Sicheng is at the rightmost part of the formation, and he starts off the choreography when the music begins. He twirls, and in that moment Yuta can feel his own body hush in anticipation, as though every other function has to pause to use his eyes and ears to their greatest capacity. Every single movement of Sicheng’s was fluid. He could contort like he was boneless, leap like he was weightless. He was powerful, but alluring.

“Fuck, he’s good,” Johnny comments offhandedly next to him.

“That’s Sicheng,” Yuta hisses through his teeth, grabbing his friend’s wrist tightly.

“That’s Sicheng?” Ten asks, eyes darting over to Yuta, whose own were still trained on the figure that commanded the stage. “I thought his name was Sasung—“

“I thought his name was Winwin,” Johnny interjects, entirely confused.

Yuta couldn’t give less of a fuck what his name really was, because if his infatuation was unfounded before, it definitely had a reason now. In every instant he felt like part of him was being tugged forward towards this presence Sicheng had. Maybe he was a succubus of some sort. All Yuta knew for a fact was that he was whipped.

“So, did you get his number?” Johnny asks in a whisper as the performance winds down, nudging his elbow into Yuta’s side. Yuta looks at him, completely crestfallen. Ten shakes his head with a disappointed sigh.

 

Apparently having _three_ of Sicheng’s names doesn’t make him any easier to find. Johnny and Ten turned out to know sparsely more about him other than the fact that he was part of the Chinese Student Association, which was so big that not even all of the executive members knew each other. From all the digging that Yuta did, the only more he could find out about Sicheng was the fact that he wasn’t a very involved member.

Taeyong is getting more and more exasperated with this Sicheng business. Not because he doesn’t care about Yuta, but because he hates wasting time, and this Sicheng business seems like a waste of time.

“This campus is huge, and in the midst of it all you managed to find him again and that’s a miracle in and of itself,” Taeyong says as they trudge down the staircase to the eleventh floor again. Despite being the largest library on campus with its eighteen stories, it was notorious for never having any free seats. It was their third or fourth walkthrough the various rooms, their last before they would resign themselves to spending their day of studying in the nearest bubble tea store, like Yuta had suggested in the first place.

But no—the less-than-silent atmosphere would distract the both of them, Taeyong said. At least in a quiet environment Yuta wouldn’t be able to voice all of his Sicheng problems out loud and take Taeyong’s attention away from his studying.

“I should have just gotten his number right then and there,” Yuta groans, expressing this sentiment in a reworded manner for the nth time of the week. Taeyong stops walking for a moment to stick his foot out and trip Yuta, who scowls after stumbling forward.

“You’re weak. It’s midterm season and you don’t have time to think about this,” Taeyong says, dragging him by the back of his shirt to a quiet study room before Yuta can loudly protest.

“Hey, it’s you,” Sicheng says, just then exiting the room the two of them were about to enter, backpack slung over his shoulder. His eyes flicker to Yuta’s, which are bulging out of his hunched over body, all thanks to how Taeyong’s been dragging him along. Yuta immediately snaps upright, and with a roll of his eyes, Taeyong goes into the study room alone, occupying the space that Sicheng must have vacated.

“Do you want to go out with me?” Yuta blurts out, too impatient to think about formalities. Or dignity. “Like, on a date,” he clarifies.

Sicheng takes a long sip of his box of soy milk, eyes never leaving Yuta’s face until the box caves in on itself. “Sure,” he says. “But I’m busy for the foreseeable future.”

Yuta doesn’t know what to say to that. “Are you…Are you playing hard to get?” he asks, a little disbelievingly.

Sicheng smiles coyly at that. “No, I _am_ hard to get,” he says, words partially mumbled with the straw held between his teeth. He crushes the milk box against his thigh and tosses it into the nearest recycling bin in a feat of hand-eye coordination. His next movement is to toss his straw into the garbage bin next to it, and Yuta dumbly thinks that he’s never found the separation of disposable materials so attractive.

“Then…Now what?” Yuta asks, because even if it’s a stupid thing to ask, he figures there’s nothing more he can lose.

“I’ll just see you around,” Sicheng says with a shrug, pulling on his other backpack strap over his shoulder. “When I’m not as busy I’ll let you know.”

“Can I have your number?” Yuta asks, throwing a glance over towards Taeyong through the glass wall between them, the latter looking at him with some impatience, considering _his_ laptop was in _Yuta’s_ bag.

Sicheng hums in thought. “Next time?” he offers, and Yuta nods. He doesn’t think he can ask for anything more, and he’s getting used to that.

 

Yuta doesn’t know why he bothers trailing along with Johnny to Ten’s parties anymore.

They’ve disappeared again, and they’re probably tumbling around in bed for what Yuta hopes is the last time before Johnny finally admits his feelings for him. Their incessant flirting had been getting unbearable lately. Yuta liked to think he was pretty tolerant of most things, but your friends eye-fucking each other across the dinner table while Taeyong portioned out smaller than usual servings of rice (Taeyong having just found out about Ten’s presence ten minutes prior)  was not one of them.

It’s almost become routine for Yuta, to encounter Ten sitting in Taeyong’s usual seat as Taeyong flipped fried eggs with a scowl. Poor Taeyong, but at least this time he allowed himself the break of tagging along with Yuta and Johnny.

“Fuck, I hope they get together too. They’re practically a couple already,” Jaehyun says, knocking his head back to finish his beer.

Yuta does the same, and grimaces. “Your beer sucks,” he comments, nose wrinkling. Jaehyun snatches it from his hand.

“Then don’t have any,” he remarks coolly. Yuta briefly wonders what he did to deserve friends with such shitty taste in alcohol, briefly musing on the time Johnny gave Taeyong a Four Loko just to see him lose his mind. That was funny at least, but a shitty beer wasn’t. A shitty beer was so easily prevented, if only someone had rooted through their deep ass pockets for a couple more dollars.

“Ignore him,” Taeyong says, joining the two of them on the couch. He’s shoving hot cheetos into his mouth, and Yuta’s compelled to comment on how Taeyong swore them off earlier in the semester. His midterms are finally over—poor guy deserves a break. “He’s just sad that he still hasn’t run into his mystery man again.”

“Ah, still? What’s it been since the last sighting, two weeks?” Jaehyun asks curiously. Fate had yet to be kind in a four-for-four kind of way to Yuta.

“C’mon, don’t pout,” Taeyong says, curling up into Yuta’s side in that habitual way he always did when he was tipsy.

“Yeah, don’t pout,” a voice echoes from behind them, owner of said voice resting his chin on the back of the couch.

“Holy shit,” Jaehyun says, startled enough to almost drop his shitty beer.

Yuta isn’t even fucking surprised it’s Sicheng, he just makes a noise—half a gasp and a scream, which Sicheng immediately imitates back at him. They both laugh, and in that moment Yuta’s eyes glint. Things are looking up, he supposes. So what if fate hated him? Coincidence at least had enough pity to humour him.

“You owe me something now, don’t you?” Yuta asks, a smile forming on his lips.

Sicheng nods. Yuta’s glad he’s never been one to shy away from a challenge.

 

That enigmatic exterior of Sicheng’s starts to peel away as Yuta gets to know him. It’s less about any mystique Sicheng possesses and much more about how he’s just a little unconventional. He doesn’t give things away too quickly, but Yuta’s happy to stick around and learn as much as he can.

Yuta comes to learn especially that he likes to spoil Sicheng, that he likes taking care of him. There’s a small crate of soy milk in his room for that reason, so Sicheng’s free to ravage it whenever he comes over.

Now that he has the opportunity, Yuta asks Sicheng many questions, as though the answer to any of them would explain his many troubles in trying to find him again. The first time they met Sicheng had left to find his friend Renjun outside, his many names are a result of him introducing himself differently depending on which environment he was in (Sasung in his classes, Winwin was a nickname), he really was busy when Yuta asked him out—it was midterm season for god’s sake, although Yuta points out that it’s always midterm season—and he wasn’t just about to give out his number to a guy he had only spoken to twice.

The more he fills in the blanks the more Yuta realizes he’s just a dummy.

Once when Yuta asks Sicheng what he would have done had they never run into each other again, Sicheng says that it doesn’t matter because they did anyway. Whatever alternate universe wherein they didn’t meet again, too bad for that Yuta, but that might be a universe where Yuta doesn’t even _like_ Sicheng so what’s the point in dwelling?

Yuta starts to learn that he’s not the only “asshole in philosophy class” of the relationship. But Sicheng’s never wrong either—and it really doesn’t matter, since all that affects them is the fact that he likes Yuta and Yuta really likes him, perplexing design and all. Sicheng never understands what Yuta means by that, but like most things, he doesn’t care too much to question it.

“God, they take forever to get together and now they can’t break apart—“ Johnny remarks offhandedly when he and Ten return to the apartment to catch Yuta and Sicheng making out on the couch.

Yuta sputters in protest, he’s done with this ridicule. “You and Ten are all over each other without him even knowing that you like him, headass,” he retorts, to which Johnny’s eyes widen in panic before his head snaps to look at Ten.

But Ten, _like everyone fucking knew he would_ , smiles widely, somehow surprised by this news, before turning to Johnny. “You do? I do too!” Ten chimes excitedly.

Yuta cuddles into his boyfriend’s side and groans about how all his friends are idiots. Sicheng smiles and pets his hair.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reaching the end! kudos and comments are appreciated.
> 
> and i just got [twitter](http://twitter.com/ten7s) again so say hello if you'd like ♡


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